A patient revisited

Back when I got back into the hobby in late 2010, my dear cousin Andy was in a bit of a fix: He really liked the Dark Eldar, but a new Codex had recently been released, along with spectacular new models. “How is that bad?”, I hear you asking. Well, along with the nice new rules and models came lots and lots of bandwagon players, enjoying the new “flavour of the month army”, and that wasn’t for Andy, who, generally speaking, enjoys making his hobby life harder for himself than it strictly needs to be. So he set aside his Dark Eldar and turned his attention to the only army list even less supported by GW than the old DE had been: The Lost and the Damned.

Soon Andy had begun collecting a small combined force of Deathguard Marines, traitors and mutants. He also bought a box of Ogres to serve as big mutants, and as with all things Nurgle, they would have to be converted to look suitably gross and disease-ridden. That’s where I came in. I had cooked up a couple of ideas for Plague Ogryns in the back of my head, and so I asked Andy if I could convert them for him. He agreed, netting me the opportunity of trying my hand at Greenstuff for the first time ever.

A short while later, my first Plague Ogryn was finished. Here it is:

Be gentle, people, it’s my first GS work 😉

As you can see, I tried to make this guy look a bit like a large Plague Bearer, giving him a single eye and horn. I also took a rather primitive stab at modelling entrails, as per SvartMetall’s fantastic tutorial. And before anyone brings this up: Yes, I am quite aware that a creature lacking virtually all of its abdominal muscles would have a pretty hard time moving at all, least of all walking upright. Chill out, Biology majors! We’re strictly talking Rule of Cool here. And the Ogre already had that gaping hole in his belly, so what was I to do?

Anyway, I was reasonably pleased with my first GS work and built two more Plague Ogryns, implementing most of the ideas I had wanted to try. And so cousin Andy ended up with a suitably Nurge-y set of models. All’s well that ends well, right?

Alas, it was not to be: Andy found out the LNTD army list didn’t do much for him, and so after the bandwagon players had moved on (to the Grey Knights, IIRC), he rejoined the ranks of the sinister and depraved Space Elves, amongst which he may still be found to this day. Meanwhile, the Plague Ogryns I had so lovingly crafted, went to his cupboard of shame, there to moulder in obscurity until the end of days — what a fitting fate for the servants of Nurgle!

Until I recently visited cousin Andy and got it into my head to paint up one of those guys for the sheer heck of it. Fortunately for me, Andy let me have my way once again, and so I got to work. I got the model in the state you saw above, with only a quick drybrush of green laid down as a basic skin colour. Working from there, I painted him up in one afternoon. Here he is, in all his pestilential glory:

As you can see, I kept the green skin, but added a couple of additional hues to the mix. I also tried to paint the metal parts of the model to look rusty and worn. And finally, this model marked not only my first attempts at GS work, but also my first use of the legendary Tamiya Clear Red: I used it to paint the Ogryn’s belly wound in a suitably wet and gory manner, then stippled it onto the various sores and boils I had modelled onto the skin as well to make them look like they were weeping some kind of bloody ichor. My overall goal was to have the model look as disgusting as I could possibly make it. I’ll let you decide whether I succeeded.

It is true that Nurgle models are always great fun to convert and paint! In addition, painting this model also proved to be a great test run for my own big mutants/Ogryn berserkers (who are also be based on WFB Ogres, but are looking pretty different, as you’ll see shortly). So thanks to cousin Andy for giving me this opportunity!

And, as always, thanks to you for looking! Stay tuned for more!